registerme
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Post by registerme on Dec 1, 2015 23:45:45 GMT
Whatever they are trying to achieve, it feels pretty ham fisted to me. ablender, no, I don't think I got an email, though, whilst I am pretty good at retaining this sort of thing, I am not perfect. If I was one of their big lenders (friends and family, underwriters, whatever), I'd be pretty unhappy with this. So unhappy that I would have expected an opt out / compensation. If I was one of their smaller lenders I would expect a..... questionable look at the intent. Maybe we should ask them? lendingcrowd, what was the intent behind the SM sale charge change? What did you expect the outcome to be? |
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stevio
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Post by stevio on Dec 2, 2015 9:10:42 GMT
The way I understood it is that you can sell parts as long as you keep your investments above the £1000 limit. So if I sell parts to buy others it should be fine. As mentioned, this was a grey area and I can only go on what I was told over the phone Just the bonus needing to stay in the account for a year is supported by the platform allowing me to sell my investment and withdraw (after sufficient time!), but a message coming up saying: "You have £150.00 which is subject to the Investor Bonus Award and is locked in until 20 November 2016." As already mentioned, I therefore think the increase in fees is to try to deter people from investing and cashing out
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alanp
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Post by alanp on Dec 2, 2015 10:06:18 GMT
I get the message re keeping the £150 on there as well.
At one stage I had over £1000 invested in loans and about £170 in cash including the £150 bonus. System would only let me withdraw anything over £150 which confused me greatly as I would still have had more than £1150 on the platform even if it let me take out what I wanted so within the terms of the agreement as far as I could work out.
Have emailed them twice and asked their rep on here by PM but have not had a response which is less than impressive in customer service terms.
Maybe one day they will clarify (and correct) their process which in my opinion is faulty.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2015 13:56:38 GMT
Whatever they are trying to achieve, it feels pretty ham fisted to me. ablender , no, I don't think I got an email, though, whilst I am pretty good at retaining this sort of thing, I am not perfect. If I was one of their big lenders (friends and family, underwriters, whatever), I'd be pretty unhappy with this. So unhappy that I would have expected an opt out / compensation. If I was one of their smaller lenders I would expect a..... questionable look at the intent. It looks obvious to me that LC underwriter it's themselves and no other party (or anyway a party/company which is under their control). They have been buying large chunks of each loan to keep things going (artificially) and to keep rates lower (again artificially). If you have a flow of new people coming in, it is very easy then to resell those parts on the secondary market. But given a lot of people (like me) recently realised the difficulties of the company which is struggling to keep up with any good practice (withdrawals, first payment dates...) and started selling, this created 'competition' for the very low cashflow on the network. LC reacted to this increasing the sales fees, attempting on one side to give the edge to their sales (which of course do not pay fees) and on the other side to discourage people leaving out... I am even not sure this was done properly. The secondary market is an integral part of the network and any change to the T&C should be personally notified to the customers and agreed...
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Post by lendingcrowd on Dec 3, 2015 17:27:51 GMT
Hi all,
The decision we made to increase the loan exchange fees was not one we took lightly. After much deliberation over the last few months we decided this was a necessary course of action in achieving our business objectives.
We want to stress again that all our investors are treated equally and there are no special terms for any investors. These changes are in place for all investors.
Regarding the bonus offers: bonus awards cannot be withdrawn from your investor account for 12 months. This is so that we can reclaim the bonus in the event that you no longer meet the terms of the offer.
We inform investors of all updates to our Terms & Conditions. Two emails were sent to all investors to notify them of the planned change to the Loan Exchange Sales Fee in advance of the change taking effect.
All the best,
LendingCrowd
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madpierre
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Post by madpierre on Dec 3, 2015 18:31:39 GMT
The decision we made to increase the loan exchange fees was not one we took lightly. After much deliberation over the last few months we decided this was a necessary course of action in achieving our business objectives.I am sure all investors will be completely satisfied with this perspicuous explanation 
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nick
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Post by nick on Dec 3, 2015 19:03:05 GMT
The way I understood it is that you can sell parts as long as you keep your investments above the £1000 limit. So if I sell parts to buy others it should be fine. I clarified the position with them prior to recently joining up as their terms and conditions clearly state that you have to hold the eligible qualifying investments for 12 months or more to retain the bonus. I was told that in practice as long as your invested amount stayed above £1,000 you are fine to sell/reinvest some of your original qualifying investments. I think increasing the SM fee at this stage is a bad idea and will have a major impact on SM volumes. I a firmly believe that an active, liquid SM is a significant attraction to any platform and naturally boost investment levels in the PM. Upping the sales fee at stage is crazy......
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SteveT
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Post by SteveT on Dec 3, 2015 19:32:22 GMT
On quiet days elsewhere in the P2P world I have toyed with the idea of "going to the next level" with LC and transferring in more than the original £1000, with a view steadily to ramping up as more loans are listed and treating it as a serious platform. I'm now very glad I didn't press the button. My % return over 12 months will be fantastic, purely because of the bonuses, but then I'm out of here (unless something changes radically to convince me LC has a long term future).
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madpierre
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Post by madpierre on Dec 3, 2015 19:51:28 GMT
On quiet days elsewhere in the P2P world I have toyed with the idea of "going to the next level" with LC and transferring in more than the original £1000, with a view steadily to ramping up as more loans are listed and treating it as a serious platform. I'm now very glad I didn't press the button. My % return over 12 months will be fantastic, purely because of the bonuses, but then I'm out of here (unless something changes radically to convince me LC has a long term future). Unfortunately for me I was here long before all the incentives and so didn't get any. So I've no reason to stay, but I think that unless we are prepared to sell at a discount, we're stuck in that same Californian Hotel as I've been inhabiting since starting to sell my holdings at FC several months ago 
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Post by lendingcrowd on Dec 4, 2015 12:59:01 GMT
On quiet days elsewhere in the P2P world I have toyed with the idea of "going to the next level" with LC and transferring in more than the original £1000, with a view steadily to ramping up as more loans are listed and treating it as a serious platform. I'm now very glad I didn't press the button. My % return over 12 months will be fantastic, purely because of the bonuses, but then I'm out of here (unless something changes radically to convince me LC has a long term future). Unfortunately for me I was here long before all the incentives and so didn't get any. So I've no reason to stay, but I think that unless we are prepared to sell at a discount, we're stuck in that same Californian Hotel as I've been inhabiting since starting to sell my holdings at FC several months ago Hi SteveT, we’re sorry you feel this way. Our aim is to have a sustainable peer-to-peer platform and the increase in fees is a reflection of this. Hi madpierre, the refer a friend bonus is still available until the end of December. You can still qualify for this offer.
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jonno
Member of DD Central
nil satis nisi optimum
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Post by jonno on Dec 4, 2015 13:16:44 GMT
Unfortunately for me I was here long before all the incentives and so didn't get any. So I've no reason to stay, but I think that unless we are prepared to sell at a discount, we're stuck in that same Californian Hotel as I've been inhabiting since starting to sell my holdings at FC several months ago Hi SteveT , we’re sorry you feel this way. Our aim is to have a sustainable peer-to-peer platform and the increase in fees is a reflection of this. Hi madpierre , the refer a friend bonus is still available until the end of December. You can still qualify for this offer. Jeez madpierre: this means you've only got three weeks to find some friends. After a lifetime of miserable isolation is this truly achievable?
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madpierre
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Post by madpierre on Dec 5, 2015 9:37:37 GMT
Hi SteveT , we’re sorry you feel this way. Our aim is to have a sustainable peer-to-peer platform and the increase in fees is a reflection of this. Hi madpierre , the refer a friend bonus is still available until the end of December. You can still qualify for this offer. Jeez madpierre : this means you've only got three weeks to find some friends. After a lifetime of miserable isolation is this truly achievable? thank you for your concern. I thought for a moment there was hope, when I discovered someone had bought £10 from one of my slumbering loan parts at LC the other day. Yippee I have a new friend I thought. But then it dawned - they must already be a signed up lender. I will continue in miserable isolation 
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nick
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Post by nick on Dec 5, 2015 19:38:11 GMT
Unfortunately for me I was here long before all the incentives and so didn't get any. So I've no reason to stay, but I think that unless we are prepared to sell at a discount, we're stuck in that same Californian Hotel as I've been inhabiting since starting to sell my holdings at FC several months ago Hi SteveT , we’re sorry you feel this way. Our aim is to have a sustainable peer-to-peer platform and the increase in fees is a reflection of this. Hi madpierre , the refer a friend bonus is still available until the end of December. You can still qualify for this offer. Hi LC. I disagree - IMO the only way that this model is sustainable is ramping up volumes. Encouraging a active SM is instrumental to this. The 0.5% fee income from SM transactions will be small compared to the effect of reduced volume on the SM, but more importantly the effect on volumes on the PM. Only a few P2P platforms will survive and remain viable long term - those can meet a critical mass by ramping up volumes. 0.5% is a real deterrent to selling on the SM. I have only just recently joined your platform to dip my toe in the water and had looked to deploy substantial funds onto your platform from others to reduce the concentration of my p2p investment portfolio. Your increase in SM fees casts doubts in my mind over liquidity and activeness of the SM going forward which is a key consideration for me when deploying any sizeable funds, as I suspect it is for most of my follow investors.
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Post by Financial Thing on Dec 5, 2015 19:59:50 GMT
lendingcrowd I understand you need to generate revenue but the Secondary Market surely can't be a make or break revenue stream for you? If so I'm concerned. I think this fee hike should have been announced with several months warning so investors could plan accordingly. And if I have to pay a 0.5% fee, then I would request being able to add a 0.5% premium to my loan part. Currently I see no option to do this. Can't say I'm a happy camper at this point.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2015 22:36:36 GMT
Hi SteveT , we’re sorry you feel this way. Our aim is to have a sustainable peer-to-peer platform and the increase in fees is a reflection of this. Hi madpierre , the refer a friend bonus is still available until the end of December. You can still qualify for this offer. Jeez madpierre : this means you've only got three weeks to find some friends. After a lifetime of miserable isolation is this truly achievable? The most sustainable platform (which has a HUGE success at present), which is SavingStream, have 0 fees on the secondary market and huge number of people investing in day after day. The other two really big companies (RS and FC) have not changed their fee structure and certainly the fee for selling on the secondary market is 0.25% or lower. If LC is struggling to create business spaces should first create a strategy, find a niche market where others are weaker and attract lenders and borrowers. At present this network is slow, inefficient, unattractive and has also become the most expensive in terms of secondary market. Honestly not a good way to make it sustainable.
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